This weekend I harvested 3 cantaloupes from our garden. Two of them were squishy so I was anxious to crack this one open as it was super pungent. It isn’t the sweetest cantaloupe I have ever had, so I should have waited a few days to open it up. This picture was shot with my 50mm f/1.8 at ISO 100, F/4, 1/8 sec.
Carson Matthews
Scofflaw POG Basement IPA
I have had this POG Passion Fruit.Orange.Guava Basement IPA from Scofflaw Brewing Company many times on draft at The Big Ketch in Buckhead, but I have to say it’s even better canned. I picked these up at Corks & Caps
See all of my craft beer photography at http://www.carsonmatthewsphotography.com/Photography/Craftbeer/
Thanks,
Carson Matthews
One of my personal goals of gardening each year is to produce fruits and vegetables for my smoothies (carrots, apples, bananas, spinach/kale, blueberries & strawberries). I haven’t had any luck getting them all to harvest at the same time, but maybe one day. This fall our garden at the Barn at the Chastain Park Conservancy has featured smoothie ingredients carrots and kale. We had a big snow a couple of weeks ago and decided to get these beauties out of the ground. This bunch of carrots came out red, orange & yellow.
Thanks,
Carson Matthews
So happy to have picked this new Stone Enjoy by 10.31.17 IPA up at Corks & Caps yesterday. I saw it on their Instagram page and ran straight over. This is probably my favorite, and most consistent ipa throughout the year. 10.31.17 lives up to it predecessors.
Enjoy,
Carson Matthews
I suppose it has been a week since the last vegetable harvest, at least for the pole beans. Today I walked away from our garden at Farm Chastain with enough beans for the family, 3 ears of Silver Queen corn, and one of Silver King. I also picked a cucumber for Martha and some squash for this week. The corn was a little early to be picked but it sure was good. I think it has another 10 days of fattening up to go, but I ran across several worms which made me nervous so I went ahead and picked some for dinner. Picking the green beans is a challenge for sure, they are super healthy so there is a ton of foliage to get through to find the beans.
I am most proud of the corn. If I were to be stranded on an island it would be a must have for me. You can also see a yellow pepper in the picture above. It needs a couple of days to sweeten up, but also looked in danger of getting eaten up out there, so I went ahead and picked.
We had two watermelons growing nicely only to come back today to find them totally rotted out. Not sure what got to them, but they were super nasty. I'll spare you that picture.
Thanks,
Carson Matthews
This year my friend Peyton McWhirter and I have been working a garden at Farm Chastain, part of the Chastain Park Conservancy. Life has gotten in the way of me posting about it from the beginning, but you can catch up through pictures at http://www.carsonmatthewsphotography.com/ChastainParkConservancy/Runnemede-Row-Farm-Chastain/
Today we got back from a week at the beach and things are coming along nicely. We definitely have a squirrel problem, and as a result no tomatoes. We probably have 100 on the vine, but they are eaten well before becoming ripe.
The corn is pretty impressive to someone that hasn’t grown corn before. We have two rows of Silver Queen and the back row is Silver King. In the last week it has grown at least a foot and ears of corn have emerged everywhere.
Moving to the left and pretty much taking over all available space is the watermelon. At my last visit our first melon was the size of a fat cucumber, today it’s the size of a rugby ball.
To the left of the melons are cucumbers, squash, bush beans, pole beans and more beans. Only the first teepee of pole beans is producing, but I definitely got enough to feed the family.
Everything in the middle is getting rampaged by squirrels. I bet there were 50 cherry tomatoes half eaten on the ground, and a couple of peppers had been eaten through. It’s time to spend a day there weeding for sure. Here is a picture of what I walked away with.
All of these pictures of our plot at Farm Chastain and many more are on my website http://www.carsonmatthewsphotography.com/ChastainParkConservancy/Runnemede-Row-Farm-Chastain/
Carson Matthews
www.CarsonMatthews.com
Last night the kids were playing with sparklers, the stars were out and the moon was slim, so it made for some good pictures of the palm tree in our yard and the stars behind it. Each image is available on my website www.CarsonMatthewsPhotography.com. The change in ISO from 3200 to 800 made a big impact on what is visible in each picture.
Nikon D800, Nikkor 28-300 f/5.6, ISO 3200, 40mm, f/10, 20 seconds
Nikon D800, Nikkor 28-300 f/5.6, ISO 800, 40mm, f/13, 30 seconds
and here are the kids and their sparklers:
Enjoy,
Carson Matthews
Over the past several days Atlanta has seen damaging storms roll through town. On Monday alone there were 20 confirmed tornados in Georgia. On Wednesday that same front turned around and came back through as a warm front, countered by a bigger cold front from the west. When it wasn’t storming the skies were perfect for photography. On Tuesday it was beautiful; here is a picture of the moon late that afternoon.
On Wednesday we had early storms in the morning. I set up my GoPro in the front window on timelapse and caught this strike of lightning over the trees.
When the morning storms cleared the coloring was beautiful outside with the sun trying to break through the clouds. Here is a picture of the calm between the storms.
Wednesday night we got the 3rd round of storms which went late into the night. Again I set up the GoPro, this time doing timelapse video, capturing the storm from the time the sun went down until it came back up Thursday morning. Here is a condensed version of that video, showing the stormy phase of Wednesday evening and the beautiful sunrise Thursday morning.
And finally here is a picture of the sunrise Thursday morning.
Enjoy!
Carson Matthews
All images are available on my website. Please visit the link below for options to download.Â
www.CarsonMatthewsPhotography.com
Years ago I bought a crock pot with ideas of all the wonderful recipes I would create. Well I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago and have used it once with solid results. With the thunder snow accumulation projections up to 7 inches in Atlanta I wanted to cook up my first pork shoulder. I grew up in Macon GA and my best friend’s family owned a BBQ restaurant. I won’t go into all of the details, just visit Fincher’s BBQ on Houston Avenue, you’ll figure it out. Anyway I have a problem where things don’t get done because I’m waiting on them to be perfect. I know Jake isn’t going to give me his recipe, and I love Sweet Baby Ray’s sauce, so I decided to go for it.
I went to Sprouts and picked up a pork shoulder. The recipe I found on Chowhound was pretty simple, apply a rub, add chicken broth, and cook for 9 hours in the crock pot.
I turned on the Crock-Pot at midnight, excited to see what would become of it by morning. At 4:30 I was awoken to “what in the world is going on in the kitchen?” It was the dankest smell in the world, like a wet blanket of pork belly filling every crevice in our house. I got up and decided to move the crock-pot to the garage for the second 4.5 hours. Once it was done I took it outside to see how it turned out.
The first thing you will notice outside is that there is zero snow. Nope, nada, just the remnants of the freezing rain and sleet that we got throughout the night. Ben called it the ultimate disappointment. We move on… Just as the recipe read, the pork  was literally falling off of the bone. It was perfect!
We ended up getting out of town and heading up to Cartersville, GA to visit with family and get our hands on some snow. That worked out just fine since I had 4 lbs of pulled pork. On the stove I combined the pulled pork and Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce, mixed up some cole slaw, and we were in business with some BBQ sandwiches.
My favorite way to enjoy BBQ.
I hope to try out some different recipes, and will most likely do it next time on the Big Green Egg. Stick around and see how it turns out.
Carson Matthews
Poppy is enthralled tonight with the Netflix show The Lion in Your Living Room
Carson Matthews Blog 